Policy toward fiscal rules is an important issue in the countries of the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia).
... See More + According to a rough estimate, the countries with rules (all but North Macedonia) have complied with their debt and overall-deficit rules a little more than half the time. An online survey, conducted for this paper, suggests that public understanding of the rules is limited, which may reduce the political pressure for compliance. To get debt down to prudent levels, Albania and Montenegro will need a strong commitment to complying with their fiscal rules and will often have to do more than their deficit rules require. The following principles should guide future policy toward fiscal rules: more emphasis should be given to ensuring that fiscal rules are widely understood and enjoy the support of a broad range of stakeholders; policy toward the rules should be consistent with accession to the European Union, but the rules should be simpler than the European Union's and the debt limits lower; limits in rules should not be mistaken for targets; and public financial management should be improved to support the implementation of rules.
See Less -

The Western Balkans is home to the most polluting power plants in Europe, and its transport and energy infrastructure require updates. Not surprisingly, countries such as Kosovo, are suffering from severe urban air pollution and traffic congestion as a result of high dependence on fossil fuels in the energy matrix, inefficient transport system and aging vehicle fleets.
... See More + These substantially harm public health, productivity and efficiency in urban mobility. Kosovo is implementing the EU enacted Stabilization Tracking Mechanism programme, aiming to gradually integrate its national policies on legal, economic and social matters with the EU. On 6 February 2018, the European Commission published its expansion plan to cover up to six Western Balkan countries including Kosovo with potential accession as members of the EU after 2025. This is relevant for vehicle emissions as it entails implementation of EU vehicle emission and fuel standards. The development objective of this project is to support the government of Kosovo and City of Pristina to develop strategies to reduce emissions and pollutions from transport perspective, such as modernization and better management of public and private vehicle fleets, and to scope for components and activities to be considered as part of potential Develop Policy Financing or Investment Project Financing by the World Bank The layout of the report includes the following sections: Chapter second realizes a rapid assessment of vehicle pollution for Kosovo including vehicle emission trends. Chapter third list in a summarized manner major instruments to reduce transportation emissions. Based on the problem and solution description policies are selected which are assessed in further detail to curb vehicle emissions in Kosovo. These policies or interventions were selected based on on-going plans and activities and interest from the Government. They include usage of low-emission buses (chapter fourth), fiscal instruments to promote low-emitting vehicles (chapter fifth) and implementation of in-service vehicle emission testing.
See Less -

Tax collection is a development challenge in Kosovo, one of the poorest and youngest countries in Europe in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, demographics, and statehood.
... See More + Limited tax revenues hamper the government's ability to address economic cycles. Between 2011 and 2017, total government revenue amounted to about 14 percent of GDP, below the average of 19 percent among countries in Europe and Central Asia. Unlike other countries that collect significant nontaxrevenues (for example, from natural resources), the Kosovar government relies on taxes for more than 85 percent of its revenues. Mobilizing tax revenues is therefore critical from both an efficiency perspective (to ensure that taxes are collected at the lowest cost for the public administration) and an equity perspective (to ensure that all taxpayers comply by declaring and paying their due taxes).
See Less -

As in many countries, tax collection is a development challenge in Kosovo. Kosovo is one of the poorest and youngest countries in Europe in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and both demographics and statehood.
... See More + The lack of an independent monetary policy — given that Kosovo has adopted the euro as the national currency — means that ensuring the sustainability of fiscal policy is critical. However, limited tax revenues hamper the government's ability to address economic cycles. Between 2011 and 2017, total government revenue amounted to about 14 percent of GDP, below the average of 19 percent among countries in Europe and Central Asia. Unlike other countries, Kosovar government relies on taxes for more than 85 percent of its revenues. Mobilizing tax revenues is therefore critical. The Tax Administration of Kosovo (TAK) requested assistance from the World Bank and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) to address this challenge using an evidence-based approach. To this end, the World Bank and GIZ applied behavioral insights to promote tax compliance among specific groups of taxpayers. Three experiments were designed, implemented, and evaluated in 2018 that involved sending behaviorally informed reminders using letters, e-mails, and short messaging service (SMS) messages to various groups of taxpayers to induce timely and honest declarations and payments. The short-term objective of these trials was to increase the number and timeliness of tax declarations. Simple, behaviorally designed messages were effective in inducing tax declaration. Messages helped raise the tax declaration rate by an average of around 3 percentage points during a period of between four and six weeks. Among personal income tax (PIT) declarations, this represents a 59 percent increase in compliance, equivalent to over 200 more annual tax declarations among participants. The likelihood of payment rose in many instances, and no significant difference was found in the amounts of taxes paid. Lessons from the tax experiments in Kosovo highlight the benefits of rigorous impact evaluation and the need to establish processes that help integrate tax collection functions and data systems.
See Less -

The Social Assistance Scheme (SAS) is the main social assistance program in Kosovo and the sole program targeted at poverty reduction in Kosovo and, importantly, the only program in which household income and assets are used to identify beneficiaries.
... See More + In the absence of SAS, the overall poverty gap would have been 1.8 percentage points higher in 2016, and the poverty rate would have been 1.5 percentage points higher. Yet, the importance of SAS in Kosovo’s social protection system has declined; decreases in spending on targeted social assistance in Kosovo goes against a worldwide trend. The Government of Kosovo seeks to reform the SAS to eliminate discrimination in program design, promote inclusion and reduce poverty. This report reviews the main design criteria of the SAS, its performance in international comparison, and provides directions for reform based on simulations with household survey data.
See Less -

In parts of Asia, South Caucasus, and the Balkans, son preference is strong enough to trigger significant levels of sex selection, result in the excess mortality of girls, and skew child sex ratios in favor of boys.
... See More + Every year, 1.8 million girls under the age of five go “missing” because of the widespread use of sex selective practices in these regions. The pervasive use of such practices is reflective of the striking inequities girls face today, and it also has negative implications for efforts to improve women's status in the long term. Consequently, governments of countries in these regions have employed direct measures, such as banning the use of prenatal sex selection technology and providing financial incentives to families that have girls. This paper takes stock of the direct measures used across countries grappling with skewed child sex ratios and compares the efficacy of direct measures with measures that indirectly raise the value of daughters. The stocktaking suggests that there is no conclusive evidence that direct approaches reduce the higher mortality risk for girls. Bans on the use of sex selection technology may inadvertently worsen the status of the very individuals they intend to protect, and financial incentives to families with girls offer short-term benefits at most. Alternatively, indirect measures, such as legal reform to promote gender equity and advocacy efforts, offer more promise by bringing about permanent shifts in the relative value of daughters. The stocktaking also underscores the paucity of causal studies in this literature.
See Less -

Sixteenth in a series of annual reports comparing business regulation in 190 economies, Doing Business 2019 covers 11 areas of business regulation.
... See More + Ten of these areas - starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency - are included in the ease of doing business score and ease of doing business ranking. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in these two measures. Doing Business provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 190 economies and selected cities at the subnational and regional level. This economy profile presents indicators for Kosovo; for 2019 Kosovo ranks 44
See Less -

Many innovative start-ups and small and medium-size enterprises have good ideas, but do not have these ideas fine-tuned to the stage where they can attract outside funding.
... See More + Investment readiness programs attempt to help firms to become ready to attract and accept outside equity funding through a combination of training, mentoring, master classes, and networking. This study conducted a five-country randomized experiment in the Western Balkans that worked with 346 firms and delivered an investment readiness program to half of the firms, with the control group receiving an inexpensive online program instead. A pitch event was then held for these firms to pitch their ideas to independent judges. The investment readiness program resulted in a 0.3 standard deviation increase in the investment readiness score, with this increase occurring throughout the distribution. Two follow-up surveys show that the judges' scores predicted investment readiness and investment outcomes over the subsequent two years. Treated firms attained significantly more media attention and were 5 percentage points more likely to have made a deal with an outside investor, although this increase is not statistically significant (95 confidence interval of -4.7 to +14.7 percentage points).
See Less -

At around 18 percent, Kosovo faces one of the lowest female labor force participation rates in the world, well below other Western Balkan countries.
... See More + Moreover, unemployment rates for women are higher than for men. This underutilization of human potential represents a strain on Kosovo’s development. A new World Bank report provides recommendations for the Public Employment Agency on how to make employment support programs more sensitive to the needs of women. The objective of this workshop was to identify concrete steps and measures that could be adopted by the Employment Agency to foster the integration of women in Kosovo's labor market. To this end, the workshop convened local stakeholders from Kosovo with substantial experience in women-targeted employment programs to discuss international and local best practice on gender-sensitive design of employment services and active measures. The conclusions of this workshop are expected to inform the policies and programs of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare and the Public Employment Agency. Specifically, recommendations from the workshop can inform the drafting of the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare’s Employment Policy 2019-2021 as well as revisions to the Operations Manuals of employment services and active labor market measures.
See Less -

This report provides new empirical insights into skill levels in Kosovo, based on two recent surveys. The Skills Towards Employment and Productivity (STEP) initiative of the World Bank has developed household-level and firm-based surveys to provide policy-relevant information on skills from both the supply and demand side.
... See More + Household-level surveys measure the supply and use of skills in the adult urban population in a comprehensive way, including cognitive and socio-emotional skills that affect work-place readiness and effectiveness. Firm-level (employer) surveys focus on identifying the cognitive and socio-emotional job-related skills that employers seek, skills that are difficult to find, and linkages between firms and education systems.
See Less -

Kosovo is one of the poorest countries in Europe, and a growing proportion of the population is at risk for social exclusion and long-term poverty.
... See More + Overall spending on social protection has increased significantly over recent years, largely because of increases in pensions and war related benefits resulting in increased fiscal pressure. Pensions are a mechanism to substitute income due to a permanent loss of income generating capacity, such as old age or disability and should not be used as a compensatory measure for other reasons. For this reason, in the early 2000s and faced with the impossibility of using contributory pension records to pay pensions, a universal basic pension was introduced in Kosovo.To contain the expansion of pension spending going forward, the government must refrain from introducing new benefits, disallow increasing benefit levels for all but the basic pensions, and pro-rate existing benefits above basic pension levels contingent on funding availability. The expansion of programs targeted at specific population groups have crowded out spending of the social assistance targeted to the poor, which is both low and declining. Increasing programs' coverage and benefit levels and prioritizing the most disadvantaged are key for increasing the effectiveness and equity of social assistance. Public investments in employment promotion and active labor market programs are limited and insufficient to meet Kosovo's labor market challenges. Given that low levels of health spending, including on drugs, is a leading cause of poverty, the social health insurance reform should not only work to improve health outcomes but also to improve financial risk protection, especially for the poor.
See Less -

The study, conducted assesses the current state of agricultural finance in the Republic of Kosovo (Kosovo) and determine ways to improve the provision of finance to Kosovo's growing agricultural economy.
... See More + The study is aimed at informing the full range of stakeholders about the best options to scale up financial services for agriculture. The study relies on data from available statistics as well as on individual and group discussions with stakeholders. Kosovo's business environment is improving, despite slow advancement in the capacity and function of the public institutions responsible for providing guidance and direction to the industry. Government focus on the World Bank (WB) Doing Business indicators has produced encouraging results. According to the Doing Business 2018 report, Kosovo is currently ranked 40th in the world, up from 126th in 2012, a leap of 86 places. In ease of starting a business, Kosovo very substantially improved its ranking, by 160 places. A law on strategic investments is under consideration, and attention is being given to support public institutions that improve the business environment, such as the Business Registration Agency, which ultimately will support investors. These developments are taking place in an economy marked by high general unemployment (30.5 percent) and very high youth unemployment (52.7 percent). The public sector remains the dominant employer and pays higher wages on average than he private sector. The supply of skilled workers is insufficient to satisfy private sector demand. Small and medium enterprises dominate the economic landscape; while these are increasing in number, few grow into larger entities.
See Less -

Doing Business 2018 is the 15th in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.
... See More + This economy profile presents the Doing Business indicators for Kosovo. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulation and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies; for 2018 Kosovo ranks 40. Doing Business measures aspects of regulation affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and resolving insolvency. Doing Business also measures features of labor market regulation, which is not included in this year’s ranking. Data in Doing Business 2018 are current as of June 1, 2017. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where and why.
See Less -

Kosovo's economy experienced strong growth over the past decade. Has growth translated into robust job creation? Do those in the bottom forty percent of the population have access to employment opportunities that can translate into sustainable shared prosperity?
... See More + This report seeks to provide an integrated analysis of the demand-side and supply-side constraints to job creation and employment; and highlighting salient issues like informality and skill mismatches. Bringing together evidence from a number of data sources, including surveys of household budgets and labor force, as well as firm-level panel data and a specialized survey capturing the employers' assessments of demand and supply of skills in Kosovo, the report tries to provide evidence to argue that reforms aimed at adopting the right set of rules, and developing the right set of skills, to promote job creation, will be vital to reduce inactivity and youth disenfranchisement, and to productively employ the demographic dividend.
See Less -

Kosovo's economy experienced strong growth over the past decade. Has growth translated into robust job creation? Do those in the bottom forty percent of the population have access to employment opportunities that can translate into sustainable shared prosperity?
... See More + This report seeks to provide an integrated analysis of the demand-side and supply-side constraints to job creation and employment; and highlighting salient issues like informality and skill mismatches. Bringing together evidence from a number of data sources, including surveys of household budgets and labor force, as well as firm-level panel data and a specialized survey capturing the employers' assessments of demand and supply of skills in Kosovo, the report tries to provide evidence to argue that reforms aimed at adopting the right set of rules, and developing the right set of skills, to promote job creation, will be vital to reduce inactivity and youth disenfranchisement, and to productively employ the demographic dividend.
See Less -

In the past, a lack of reliable access to electricity had frequently been cited as the largest single barrier to investment in Kosovo, limiting Kosovo’s economic growth and the achievement of human development goals.
... See More + Kosovo’s ability to provide sustainable energy to its citizens was hampered by problems across the entire sector - Generation, Transmission, Supply and Distribution. Every aspect of the power sector was run by state owned companies, with the Energy Corporation of Kosovo (KEK) operating and overseeing power generation, distribution and supply, while transmission services were managed by the Kosovo Transmission System and Market Operator (KOSTT).
See Less -

This paper explains about the Kosovo's population and economy are exposed to earthquakes and floods, with earthquakes posing the greater risk of a high impact, lower probability event.
... See More + The model results for present-day risk shown in this risk profile are based on population and gross domestic product (GDP) estimates for 2015. The estimated damage caused by historical events is inflated to 2015 US dollars. Just over half of Kosovo's population lives in rural environments. The country's GDP was approximately USD 6.4 billion in 2015, with most derived from services and industry and agriculture generating the remainder. Kosovo's per capita GDP was USD 3.140.
See Less -

Overall performance in science, reading, and math lags behind ECA and OECD average. For reading and mathematics, more than three-quarters of students perform below basic proficiency.
... See More + In science the gap in performance between students from the top and bottom income groups is the equivalent of 1.5 years of schooling; and urban students outperform rural peers by almost one year of schooling. This report presents graphical data on scores; science comparisons; student performance; equity profile; and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) performance and gross domestic product per capita.
See Less -

This economy profile presents the Doing Business indicators for Kosovo. To allow useful comparison, it also provides data for other selected economies (comparator economies) for each indicator.
... See More + Doing Business 2017 is the 14th in a series of annual reports investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Economies are ranked on their ease of doing business; for 2016 Kosovo ranks 64. Doing Business sheds light on how easy or difficult it is for a local entrepreneur to open and run a small to medium-size business when complying with relevant regulations. It measures and tracks changes in regulations affecting 11 areas in the life cycle of a business: starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, resolving insolvency, and labor market regulation. Doing Business 2017 presents the data for the labor market regulation indicators in an annex. The report does not present rankings of economies on labor market regulation indicators or include the topic in the aggregate distance to frontier score or ranking on the ease of doing business. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where, and why. The data in this report are current as of June 1, 2016 (except for the paying taxes indicators, which cover the period January-December 2015).
See Less -

The Country opinion survey for 2016 in Kosovo assists the World Bank Group (WBG) in gaining a better understanding of how stakeholders in Kosovo perceive the WBG.
... See More + The survey explored:(i) general issues facing Kosovo; (ii) overall attitudes toward the World Bank Group; (iii) World Bank Group’s effectiveness and results; (iv) The World Bank Group’s knowledge work and activities; (v) working with the World Bank Group; (vi) the future role of the World Bank Group in Kosovo; (vii) communication and information sharing; and (viii) background information.
See Less -